Sad But True

This world-

absolutely pure
As is. 

Behind the fear,

Vulnerability. 

Behind that,
Sadness, 

then compassion
And behind that the vast sky.

 -- Rick Fields

 

  “This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we’re arrogant and soften us when we’re unkind.  It awakens us when we prefer to sleep and pierces through our indifference. ”
-- Pema Chodron

Sometimes, insight and healing emerge slowly during the course of Practice.   Like spring gently unfolding across the palette of April, our world slowly greens and blooms.  What was dark, harsh and frigid, slowly brightens, softens and warms.  At a certain point we notice:  It's different now than before.

At other times, insight and healing emerge like a bolt of lightning!

Zap! 

Sometimes coming with a torrential downpour of tears, sometimes not, a Grand Gestalt comes together in a heartbeat. In a flash, in an instant,  we really Get It!  Or perhaps, more accurately -- It Gets Us! 

We can't help but notice.  It's different now than before.

I love comparing notes with others on such awakenings.

 

I was fortunate enough to be at Himalayan Views, a nearby spiritual gift shop/bookstore a few years ago, to hear about a woman's experience of one of those moments.  

 

Suffering from what had been diagnosed as "clinical depression" since adolescence, she had struggled through a series of medications for nearly twenty years before coming across a passage on "the genuine heart of sadness" in a book by Pema Chodron.

Zap!

As she read that passage an awakening had come in a flash.  In a burst of tears -- she knew.  At that instant, she discovered a whole new way to view her experience.  Rather than accept that she had a "broken brain" and needed medication to correct a chemical imbalance, she knew that she could trust her heart.  In that moment, she saw clearly that her deep sadness about the human condition wasn't a sickness, it was an essential Connection to Bodhichitta, the soft and tender core of our Spiritual Heart.  

Like many of us, this woman had felt the power of this deep connection to the Mysterious Reality of Life/Death as a child, but nobody in her life knew what it was.  Her parents didn't understand. Neither did her teachers.  In a society steeped in scientific materialism and a pharmaceutical industry run amuck, she was diagnosed and "treated."  

 

As she read the teaching from Pema Chodron that day, she understood.  Her sadness wasn't a personal flaw.  It wasn't an illness.   That day, she knew that in her Heart of Hearts that she had touched what the Buddha had touched.  Suffering was inherent in the fabric of human life.

 

Now, she just needed to learn how to work with it.  

With the assistance of a supportive counselor and a regular meditation practice, she successfully decreased, and then discontinued, her use of antidepressant medications.  At the point she was sharing her story, had been successfully, sometimes quite joyfully, navigating her life for several years -- drug free.

Please understand: My point here is not that medications are always the wrong approach.  (As a child of the sixties, how could I ever claim that drugs are always a bad thing?)  Drugs simply are what they are.  

 

Over the years, I have had dear friends whose quality of life has been improved through the use of prescription drugs to address their psychological and physical health. Yet, I also have friends who, like the woman I met that day, found that their quality of life improved only when they stopped relying on medications.  There is no "one size, fits all" mode of healing.

Instead, what I am pointing to here, is that there is a great value in exploring what our society conditions us to avoid.  When approached skillfully, the emotional energies of honest grief can be the gateway to a deeper Connection to our True Nature. 
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Sad Ain't Bad

 

Oftentimes, "Don't be sad" can actually be a horrible message. 

 

Sadness is inherent in the fabric of life itself.  With Practice, it can be approached with understanding and skill.

 

As many of the sages and seers through the ages have realized, deep within our own personal sadness is a shared existential sadness that connects us to one another and to the One Love that forms the groundless ground of our being. 

 

Rather than "harden our hearts", we have the choice to soften, to open.  Once embraced, the Genuine Heart of Sadness becomes the pathway to a fundamental fearlessness, boundless compassion,  -- and deep joy.

In fact, as Practice unfolds -- on the meditation cushion and in our lives -- we find that the entire range of our human feelings, including the so-called "negative" emotions of fear, sadness, anger, confusion, shame, etc. can be embraced, gently explored, and understood.  In the infinite space of an open heart and a clear mind, Love is all there is.

 

It just takes Practice.